Salt Lake evening Democrat. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1885-1887, 1887-06-04
AMERICAN LITERARY CRITICS.

If we were to be quite honest (Which
is really not the best policy in some
things), we should say to these brothers
of ours that they were still rather apt to
behave brutally in behalf of good taste
and the best art; and that they were
perilously beset by temptations to be
personal, to be vulgar, to be arrogant,
which they did not always overcome.
Perhaps we might 60 as far as to say that
that their tone was sometimes ruffianly,
though perhaps this would be going too
far perhaps one ought to add that it
might not be consciously so. In this
home of the amenities, this polite haunt
of literary discernment, artistic sensi-
bility, and moral purpose, the critic
sometimes appears in the panolpy of the
savages whom we have supplanted; and
it is hard to believe that his use OF the
tomahawk and the scalping-knife is a
form OF conservative surgery. 1t is still
his conception of his Office that he should
assail with bitterness and obloquy those
who differ with him in matters of taste
or opinion that he must be rude to
those he does not like, and that he ought
to do them violence as q proof of his
superiority. 1t is too largely his super
stition that because he likes thing it is
good, and because he dislikes thing it
is bad the reverse is quite possibly the
case, but he is yet indefinitely far from
knowing that in affairs of taste his per-
sonal preference enters very little. Com
monty he has no principles, but only an
assortment of prepossessions for and
against; and we grieve to say that this
otherwise very perfect character is some
kAf ho g. l,oh.
ty. He seems not to mind misstating the
position OF any one he supposes
himself to disagree with, and then attack
ing him for what he never said, or even
implied; the critic thinks this is droll,
and appears not to suspect that it is i'm
moral. He is not tolerant; he thinks it
virtue to be intolerant; it is hard for
him to understand that the same thing
may be admirable at one time and de-
plorable at another; and it is really his
business to classify and analyze the fruits
OF the human mind as the naturalist
classities the objects of his study. rather
than to praise or blame them; that there
is a measure OF the same absurdity in his
trampling on poem, a novel or an essay
that does not please him as in the botan-
lists grinding plant under foot because
he does not find it pretty. He does not
conceive that it is his business rather to
identify the species and then explain how
and where the species is imperfect and
irregular. If he could once acquire this
simple ideas of his duty he would be
much more agreeable company than he
now is, and more useful member of
society; though We trust We are not vet
saying that he is not extremely delight
iul as he is, and wholly indispensable.
He is certainly more ignorant than NAL
evolent; and considering the hard con-
ditions under which he works, his neces-
sity of writing hurriedly from an imperfect
examination of far more books, on a
greater variety of subjects, than he can
even hope to read, the average American
critic-the ordinary critic of commerce,
so to Speaks very we'll, indeed. Col
lectively he is more than this; for, as we
said once before, we believe that the
joint effect of our criticism is the pretty
thorough appreciation of any book sub
mitted to it.
The misfortune rather than the fault of
our several or individual critic is that he
is the heir of the false theory and bad
manners of the English school. The
toSOA VI OAAs1 oOhOOl UccH
that almost any person OF glib and lively
expression is competent to write of al
most any branch of polite literature its
manners are what we know. The Amer
ican, whom it has largely formed, is by |
nature very glib and lively, and COM
monty his criticism, viewed as imagina-
tive work, is more agreeable than that of |
the Englishman; but it is, like the art of |
both countries, apt to be amateurish. In |
some degree our authors have freed |
themselves from English models; they |
have gained some notion of the more se-
rious work of the Continent; but it is
still the ambition OF the American critic |
to write like the English critic, to show |
his wit if not his learning, to strive to |
eclipse the author under review rather |
than illustrate him. He has not yet |
caught on to the fact that it is really no |
part OF his business to exploit himself, |
out that 1t is altogether his business to
place book in such light that the reader
shall know its class, its function, its char.
acter. The vast good-natlre of orfr Y,ar,, 4,